WSJ on College Hockey, Big Chill

Today's Wall Street Journal has a prominently featured article on this weekend's game, including two pictures with the article on D7 of today's print edition.

Some excerpts:

Big Ten schools, and Michigan in particular, demonstrate the sport's potential. The Wolverines draw near-sellout crowds at every home game at Yost Ice Arena, which holds 6,637 fans. And hockey tickets can be $30 cheaper than football tickets. Michigan athletic director David Brandon calls hockey the "best ticket in town."

Thanks to the enormity of the crowd—it will shatter the attendance record for the number of people watching a hockey game by nearly 40,000—Michigan expects its hockey program to bring in more ticket revenue than basketball this season by a margin of more than $1 million.

The Big Ten Network, the conference's lucrative three-year-old sports channel, is a natural outlet that can carry games both regionally and nationally. The network is broadcasting nine hockey games this season. "We'd be interested in doing more," said spokeswoman Elizabeth Conlisk. "It certainly has quite a bit of appeal in this part of the country."

Good point, I didn't notice that. I wonder how many kids who are currently uttering the sentence "I went to State because Michigan doesn't have a J-school..." have ever been published by the most-read newspaper in the country while still a student.

The Big Chill is definitely a major step forward for the hockey program and the University at large when it comes to exposing the brand to the rest of America. I'm immensely excited about the direction the school is taking.